CHAPTER TWELVE.
FIGHTING THE FLAMES.
For fully three days did our friends occupy themselves in the verynecessary work of perfecting the defences of their stronghold on themountain, and in teaching a picked dozen of the Atagbondo the use of therifle, with which weapon they soon became fair marksmen, in the nativeacceptance of the term.
On the fourth day, however, a discovery, trifling in itself, convincedthe party that, so far from having been forgotten by Zero, they were atpresent occupying the whole of his earnest attention.
The incident in question was the accidental notice taken by Kenyon of asmall bird wheeling round and round their position; closer and closer itcame, until all could see perfectly well that it was a white carrierpigeon, bearing a message. Finding, however, that the party did notwhistle it in, the bird grew shy, and quickly took to flight Leighraised his rifle with the intention of bringing it down, but Kenyonstopped him just in time.
"Don't shoot, old fellow," he said; "I've a fancy to let that birdseverely alone. I want to know just where it's bound for at the presentmoment."
Watching very carefully, the pigeon was at last seen to enter a clump ofbush about half a mile up the mountain side, and scarcely ten minuteslater, either it, or a similar bird, left the same cover, and winged itsrapid way due north.
The inference was plain, and our friends looked blankly at one another;but, ere they could speak, the Zulu chief had summoned Umbulanzi anddirected him to take two men, thoroughly search the suspected spot, andput to the assegai anyone they might find lurking there.
Grenville and Kenyon would have much preferred taking the spy--if spythere was--alive, but the fear that his presence would cause the injuredPeople of the Stick to overstep all restraint and become guilty of somefearful act of barbaric cruelty, decided them to let the man fight itout to the bitter end for his own life, rather than to permit him tofall into the hands of a raging mob of naked savages, whose tenderestmercies, maddened as they were by their frightful wrongs, would be cruelindeed.
Anxiously our friends watched the progress of the three Zulus up themountain, and all at once Leigh took a fancy to follow them, and wassoon swinging up the slant with rapid steps, accompanied by Amaxosa andKenyon.
The Zulus reached the spot and plunged into the cover, from which thereinstantly arose a tremendous hubbub, and a moment later all threereappeared, fairly driven out by half a score of white men, and fightingfuriously with their spears against several of the slavers, who werearmed with axes, whilst the remainder stood by eagerly seeking anopportunity to use their guns.
Promptly Leigh and Kenyon pitched forward their rifles, and two of theslavers instantly rolled head over heels down the mountain side, whilstat the same moment, uttering a wild shout of encouragement, Amaxosadashed forward like an arrow from the bow, and in another second wasside by side with his warriors, their nervous arms dealing out death anddisaster with every sweeping blow. When Leigh and Kenyon reached theplatform upon which this tragedy had been enacted, there was but one ofthe enemy left alive, and he was engaged in a terrific hand-to-handcombat with Amaxosa. All at once the Zulu's axe broke off short in thehaft, and the ruffian slaver rushed at him with a victorious shout.Springing lightly to one side, however, the active chief easily avoidedthe deadly stroke aimed at him by his opponent, whom he seized the nextinstant from behind, with his powerful hands pinning the man's arms tohis side, and before anyone could interfere, or even speak, with onemighty effort the fierce Zulu fairly swung his hapless foe from theground, and then dashed him down full upon the rock, on his bare skull,which was crushed in like an egg-shell, the awful blow, of course,killing him on the spot, and an instant later the mountain side echoedto the triumphant notes of the famous Undi war-chant.
"Oh, my father," said the great Zulu, contemplating his handiwork withsatisfaction, and speaking to Leigh, "it was a great fight; few couldhave slain the man with empty hands. Sleep softly, ye evildoers; theLion of the Undi bids you sleep!"
Carefully examining the cover from which the discomfited foe had sprung,our friends found that it consisted of a shallow cave in the face of therock, the entrance being masked by low bushes, and a thick undergrowthof wild vines. In this hiding-place Kenyon discovered a basketcontaining three white and two black pigeons, whilst a note, evidentlythe one just received, lay upon the rocky floor. Eagerly pouncing uponthis, the detective quickly mastered its contents, which were simply asfollows:--
"The second detachment will arrive at midnight to-night.--
"Zero."
Clearly it was not, therefore, a mere question of spying upon theirposition; but the evident intention of the cunning slaver was to send insmall drafts of men to conceal themselves upon the mountain; and these,when his own army moved up to the attack, would, at a given signal,doubtless fall upon our friends in the rear, and thus effect a veryserious diversion in favour of Zero, at a most critical moment.
The scheme was well thought-out, but the watchfulness of Kenyon hadcompletely ruined it; and if the further suggestions which he now madeshould prove workable, the little band might be relied upon to readMaster Zero another very severe and humiliating lesson, when he made hisintended final onset.
Briefly, Kenyon's idea consisted of an attempt to lure the seconddetachment of slavers on to their utter destruction, but in view oftheir prematurely taking the alarm in consequence of our friendspossibly failing to understand and correctly to answer their secretsignals, a large party was to be slipped into the long grass of theveldt to intercept the slavers in the event of their making a push toescape, and an endeavour was to be made to capture some of the menalive, and force them to give up the secrets of their curious system ofaerial correspondence.
Finally it was decided that Amaxosa should set out with ten of his ownmen and fifty of the warriors of the Atagbondo at moonrise, and lie inambush about three miles to the north of the mountain, but this partywas on no account to make any movement, except in the event of a rocketbeing fired from the camp, giving them the direction of the escapingslavers. The Zulu was especially cautioned against making fire signalsof any kind, as it was calculated that the enemy would, themselves,probably employ these.
Little, however, did our friends know, as yet, of the devilish ingenuityof Master Zero, who had but to suspect the very remotest possibility ofthe existence of a trap to guard against it in most effectual fashion,and that night our friends received a peculiarly unpleasant proof of hisdangerous capabilities in this direction.
The matter fell out thus:--As Kenyon, Leigh, and a party of fifty pickedmen were lying noiselessly in wait in the cover from which they had thatmorning driven the enemy, they were suddenly and viciously attacked,without a moment's warning, by Zero's forerunner, in the shape of anenormous jaguar, which severely mauled a number of the men ere he wassettled by Kenyon, who drove a Zulu assegai through the beast's spine,whereupon his roarings woke every living echo in the country side, and amoment later a moving mass of dark forms could be seen gliding out fromthe friendly shadows cast by the mountain, and stringing themselvesacross the veldt in a vain effort to escape from their active foes.
Quickly Grenville sent up his rocket, and as the glittering thread offire traced its way across the heavens, Leigh and his eager party dasheddown the mountain, and followed the flying foe at speed across theveldt, fearing from their apparent strength that the slavers might provetoo heavy for Amaxosa and his little band.
A mile from the rocks, finding their retreat cut off, the slavers formedin square and stood at bay between two fires. Leigh called to them tosurrender, and lay down their arms, but the answer was hurled back inthe shape of a contemptuous curse and a rattling volley, which stretchedseveral of the Atagbondo upon the ground.
Not one moment after this could Leigh or Amaxosa restrain their men, whosimply flung themselves upon the very muzzles of the slavers. Nothingshort of a triple line of bayonets could have withstood such amagnificently audacious charge, and in less time than it takes
to tell,the "People of the Stick" had literally wiped their hated foes off theface of the earth.
Five minutes covered the whole ghastly affair from beginning to end, andin that short space of time, Zero, in addition to the loss of his pettiger, had suffered to the extent of fifty-three men, whilst our friendshad on their side eleven killed outright and seventeen wounded, two ofthese last, dying the next day.
"Haow Inkoos," said the Zulu chief approvingly; "it is indeed a bravepeople, and fights well, almost as well as the Amazulu, but I would theyused the assegai or the axe and made cleaner work of it. Well, what isdone is done, my father, and these evil witch-finders will never troubleus again," and the great Zulu philosophically took a mighty pinch ofsnuff and offered one to Leigh in token of his entire satisfaction withthe result of the night's work.
As soon as the arms had been collected, and the wounded men properlyattended to, a council of war was held by the entire party, and underthe circumstances it was considered useless to try and impose deceptivemessages upon Zero, the more so as Kenyon himself was strongly ofopinion, that not the pigeons, but the jaguar, had in the presentinstance been intended to carry back to Equatoria, news of the safearrival of the band. The great cat would, of course, have been startedoff in the dark, without loss of time, or risk of suspicion even in theevent of its being observed, and would certainly have travelled veryswiftly to its distant home.
On the following morning the Atagbondo buried their dead, and then threwthe deceased slavers into the river to carry a message of woe andweeping to their friends a hundred miles below.
Noticing his cousin looking anxiously at the summit of the mountainseveral times that day with Kenyon's field-glass, "What's the matterwith the peak, old chap?" said Leigh.
"I wish I knew, Alf," was the reply; "I haven't seen it since the nightwe got here: ever since then it has been completely hidden by yonderwhite cloud, which rests upon it, and unless I am mistaken, the heatemanating from that vapour is so intense, that the everlasting snows arebeing absolutely melted away from the summit of the cone."
Just then a very wonderful and awful thing happened, for even asGrenville was speaking, the heat-clouds suddenly rolled away like ascroll and curled up out of sight, revealing the glittering peak for onebrief instant in all the radiant majesty of its unveiled glory, and thenthe very next second there shot far, far up into the azure vault, agiant jet of angry, inky-looking smoke, which floated lightly and lazilythrough the absolutely pulseless air towards the north, and was quicklysucceeded by another great puff, and another, until the whole of thenorthern heavens were densely clouded, and the mountain itself bore theappearance of a gigantic monster mechanically expelling vast volumes ofdead black smoke at every labouring respiration of its mighty rock-girtlungs, and shrouding the whole country in a sombre death-like pall ofweird and awful shade.
"A volcano, by Jove!" ejaculated Leigh.
"Yes," replied his cousin, "and an active one, too. I fear thatUmbulanzi's explosion, the first night we came, has awakened theslumbering internal fires, or else the water is somehow penetrating intothe crater and interfering with the gases imprisoned in its abysmaldepths. We shall be in a nice pickle if the volcano takes a fancy toindulge in an eruption just at present; however, we must hope for thebest, old man, and put our trust in Providence."
That very night, sad to say, our friends were awakened by theobjectionable throes of a mighty earthquake; the rocks quaked andgroaned, and the very bowels of the mountain were rent and torn byear-splitting explosions, and in less than ten minutes the whole partywas in full flight across the northern veldt, positively chased from thestronghold upon which they had bestowed so much labour by great streamsof burning lava which, like vast rivers, flowed unimpeded down themountain side, and, instantly setting the long grass on fire, caused ourfriends a most anxious time until they had safely crossed the river andgot well away from the spot--their movements being rendered relativelyslow by the necessity of carefully transporting the wounded men inhammocks.
After a short consultation it was decided to steer for the Hermit's Caveagain, and to try and discover a place capable of defence somewhere inthe immediate vicinity of Equatoria; for, with the exception of themountain from which they had just been so rudely expelled, our friendswere assured by the natives that no natural fastness of any kind existedwithin a hundred miles to the south of their present location, andsouthwards all, both black and white, absolutely declined to move untilZero was stamped out, or until they themselves were effectually disposedof in attempting to settle with him.
A very sharp look-out would have to be kept in order to avoid fallinginto the hands of the slavers, who were sure to notice the eruption ofthe volcano, and, knowing that the little band would have in consequenceto relinquish the shelter afforded by the mountain, would doubtless beoutlying with a view to falling upon them unawares; but by confining thetravels of the party strictly to the night-time, and lying carefully hidby day, Grenville and Amaxosa hoped to bring all safely into the desiredhaven.
At all events, our friends were no worse off, in consequence of theirjourney to the peak, having, on the contrary, inflicted two crushingblows upon the enemy, and exchanged the bare handful of men with whichthey left Equatoria for a small army thoroughly equipped for war,already well-tried, and thirsting for occupation in the fighting line.
Zero the Slaver: A Romance of Equatorial Africa Page 12
